Monday, December 22, 2014

I did the survey and I encourage you to do it. It will take about 5 minutes.

Will the feedback change any minds in Coastal Health? Maybe. It's always worth a try.

Have a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year. Thanks for all your great work, past, present and future!

Dear Colleague,

I have been asked to forward this
survey to my network in the field. They are looking for responses from
people in the field, users of services, families, workplaces etc. I
feel it is important for the voice of recovery to be reflected in this.
Please take a moment to participate in this survey and forward it to
your network if you feel its appropriate. Thank you.

Saturday, November 22, 2014

It's time to plan and budget for the annual "Recovery New Year's
Eve Celebration" hosted by the West Coast Area of Narcotics Anonymous.

You are invited to the Roundhouse Community Centre in Yaletown on December 31st
to ring in the New Year. This annual event attracts over 700 guests of
all ages and gives people in recovery an opportunity to celebrate the
holiday in
a safe fun environment.

9 pm to 12:30 am

RoundHouse in Yaletown, two minutes from the skytrain

Stage 1 - 80's, Rock and Dance Music

Stage 2 - House Music, Techno, Urban beats

Stage 3 - Live Music, Open Mic

Room 4 - Kids Zone

Room 5 - Marathon 12 Step Meeting

*A discount on tickets are provided for group sales to treatment
centres, from $25 to $15, these tickets must be purchased in a group by
your facility

*Do you have a talented client? they are welcome to sing or play
music on Stage 3, contact Don P to book the stage time by calling 778-892-5125

*to order bulk tickets at a discounted rate please contact Max at 604-992-4897

The majority of cities in Colorado that have now opted out of pot - for a total of 161 representing 70% of the state.

“Legalization in practice will always be the biggest enemy of
legalization,” Kevin Sabet Smart Approaches to Marijuana (USA) and
affiliate organization to Smart Approaches to Marijuana Canada
www.samcanada.net

Details for Colorado’s rejection of pot extents with a further 11.74%
with a moratoriums on pot use in place, leaving only 20% ( 47) with
licensing allowed as reported by SAM Colorado co-ordinate Bob Doyle.

Pot was further rejected in the State of Florida on November 4 th . 2014
with the defeat of the legalization of medical marijuana initiative.
The win came with a well fought campaign run under the banner “Don’t Let
Florida Go To Pot”.

In Washington DC voters passed a medi-pot initiative which does not
include the sale of marijuana. The campaign slogan for the pro marijuana
side of the debate was: “Legalization Ends Discrimination”.

In Oregon, the pro-pot people pumped at least $7.6 million into the
campaign, versus around $168,000 on our side. The Drug Policy Alliance,
which advocates the legalization of ALL drugs, spent at least $2.4
million in Oregon. The Peter Lewis family invested almost $2 million
there.

Oregon's vote means that users can possess a half pound of marijuana at a
time, plus 4 plants which can produce additional pounds. This is 8
times the amount of marijuana that is legal in Colorado and Washington.​

Alaska votes to legalize with a small margin, but the Marijuana Policy
Project invested over $1 million there vs $150,000 against legalization.

In the state of California 80% of towns, cities, including San Jose, the
3 rd largest city in California and the 10 th . largest city in the
USA, have passed medical marijuana bans. Their right to do so has been
upheld by the Supreme Court of California.

8.2% of Canadians use pot and 7% of Americans.

Both Canada and the USA are signatories to the United Nations The Rights
of the Child Treaty which rejects the move to more permissive drug
policies.

Did
you know that The United Way Calgary and Area funds our Family Healing
Program 100%? They have been instrumental in making a difference in how
recovery effects families as a whole. We could not do what we do without
them. Come out and join us for our 2nd annual Family and Friends
Fundraising Dinner. November 6th starting at 6pm
will be an evening with a 3 course dinner, live acoustic
music,inspiring speeches and the gift of paying it forward. All funds
raised will go to our friends at The United Way Calgary and Area.

Saturday, September 20, 2014

Recovering addicts and supporters rally in Vancouver for 3rd annual Recovery Day

By TIFFANY CRAWFORD, VANCOUVER SUN September 13, 2014

Park board vice chair Constance Barnes reads the proclamation for Recovery Day in Vancouver on Saturday

Photograph by: TIFFANY CRAWFORD, VANCOUVER SUN

VANCOUVER
— Organizers of Recovery Day, an annual event held in 25 cities across
Canada to celebrate overcoming addiction, are hoping the federal
government will proclaim a Recovery Month, to further raise awareness
about the disease.

As loud electronic music boomed from Queen
Elizabeth Plaza in downtown Vancouver on Saturday, dozens of recovering
addicts and their supporters gathered for the city’s third annual
Recovery Day, before marching to the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Among
them was park board vice chair Constance Barnes, whose own struggle with
alcohol addiction was thrown into the spotlight five years ago when she
was arrested for drinking and driving.

”So many people are still
in hiding because of the stigma. It’s brutal. This is a disease just
like any other,” said Barnes, adding she would like to see a centre for
excellence for addiction built in Vancouver.
“Recovery can be from anything — food, bulimia, sex, porn — it’s not just alcohol and drugs.”

In
2009, Barnes was arrested outside of a home in south Vancouver after
she fell asleep at the wheel and hit a residential home. She later
issued a statement, apologizing for her actions, which had followed a
time of “deep personal struggle.”

She has since received help and
counselling that looks at the genealogy of family addiction. At the
Orchard Recovery and Treatment Center on Bowen Island, Barnes said she
found the therapy enlightening, and also discovered that she was
predisposed to the disease.

Barnes, who is seeking the federal NDP
nomination in Vancouver Centre, said by speaking out about addiction,
she hopes more people will feel comfortable talking about it with
friends, family and coworkers.

“We still don’t ask whether this is a disease and we need to be asking that question.”

Recovery
Day spokeswoman Lorinda Strang said 25 cities across Canada are holding
similar events, but at different times of the month.

“This is
about hope. It’s about freedom. It’s about courage and perseverance,
everything that it means to be in recovery,” she said. “We are not
aligned with any one group, but we want people to know there are many
ways to get into recovery. Whatever the path, the ultimate goal is
freedom from addiction.”

In 2012, Mayor Gregor Robertson
proclaimed Recovery Day in conjunction with Vancouver resident David
Berner, executive director of the Drug Prevention Network of Canada.

The
U.S. government recognizes September as Recovery Month, and Strang, who
is also the executive director of Orchard Recovery and Treatment
Center, said they will be asking the federal government to do something
similar here in Canada.

Friday, September 19, 2014

The Edgewood 2014 Conference runs October 2nd and 3d in Nanaimo with quite an array of knowledgeable and inspirational speakers.

Please click through here to go to the Edgewood site and get all the details and registration.

We bring your attention in particular to Dr. Marc Fishman, whose presentation is entitled, "Marijuana - Whats' the Big Deal?" Dr. Fishman will point out that this is a big deal and not a good one.

Dr. Marc Fishman is
an addiction psychiatrist and a member of the faculty of the Department of
Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins
University School of Medicine. He leads Maryland Treatment Centers, a regional
behavioral healthcare provider, which includes several inpatient and outpatient
programs for adolescents, adults and young adults. In that role he has been
involved in development and implementation of innovative programming in
addiction and co-occurring disorder treatment. He is a national expert on youth
addiction treatment and treatment matching. His academic work has focused on
models of care and treatment outcomes for addictions in youth, particular
opioid dependence. He is a past President of the Maryland Society of Addiction
Medicine.

Medical Matters: The health and social benefits of abstaining from cannabis

Where possible, doctors strive to practice
evidence-based medicine. But we are human, and not immune to the
influence of the unusual or extreme case. What makes one patient stand
out more than others may be a feature of the disease, the patient, or
our own sensitivities.

As a medical student, the
details of the first patient I saw with psychosis have remained with me.
He was not much younger than me, and had started university some months
earlier.

He had been admitted to hospital with a florid psychosis, convinced he was Christ.

Not
unlike the many adolescents starting college this month, the freedom
from home and the lights of a big city meant new experiences. Among
these was the easy availability of cannabis; he had smoked a number of
joints in the previous weeks.

Unfortunately, the expert opinion was that his use of cannabis precipitated the psychotic episode.

Now
this was the first and only time I have seen cannabis-induced
psychosis, so in the greater scheme of things it is nothing more than
medical anecdote. Nonetheless, the details of the case have stayed with
me to emerge from the memory banks following the publication of some
related research last week.

Drug statistics

The
large meta-analysis – a study of combined previous research – showed
that people who are daily users of cannabis before the age of 17 are
more than 60 per cent less likely to complete secondary school or to
complete a degree compared with those who have never used the drug.

Published in the journal Lancet Psychiatry,
the authors also found that daily users of cannabis during adolescence
are seven times more likely to attempt suicide and are eight times as
likely to use other illicit drugs in later life.

In
this study, a team of Australian and New Zealand researchers combined
data on some 3,765 participants who used cannabis from three large,
long-running longitudinal studies to find out more about the link
between the frequency of cannabis use before the age of 17 and seven
developmental outcomes up to the age of 30.

The
outcomes measured were: completing high school; obtaining a university
degree; cannabis dependence; use of other illicit drugs; suicide
attempt; depression; and welfare dependence. However, they did not
include psychosis or a diagnosis of schizophrenia in their outcomes.

But
in a linked editorial Merete Nordentoft, professor of psychiatry at the
University of Copenhagen in Denmark, notes: “Cannabis use in
adolescence has also been associated with increased risk of psychosis in
adulthood.

“Cannabis use is associated with
earlier onset of psychosis, and in patients with cannabis use and
psychosis, risk of continuous psychotic symptoms is higher in those who
continue to use cannabis than in those who stop.”

And
a 2007 comprehensive analysis of the relationship between cannabis use
and the development of psychosis in later life concluded that the risk
of psychosis increased by some 40 per cent in people who have used
cannabis, with the risk rising the more the drug is used.

The
authors from Cardiff University and the University of Bristol estimated
that some 14 per cent of cases of schizophrenia in young adults could
be prevented if cannabis was not available.

There
is evidence to show that brain development during adolescence can be
harmed by frequent cannabis use and that cognitive functions can be
reduced permanently. This impairment and the low energy and reduced
initiative associated with persistent cannabis use are the likely
reasons for the poor educational outcomes shown in the recent research.

With
global moves to decriminalise and legalise cannabis gaining momentum,
it is important to protect adolescents from gaining easier access to the
drug.

Otherwise we will simply increase the
numbers of young people having difficulty completing school and college,
and add to those facing problems achieving social and personal
maturation.

This latest research provides strong
evidence that the delay or prevention of cannabis use is likely to have
broad health and social benefits.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

On Monday afternoon, I had the pleasure of visiting one of three houses run by the Giving Back Recovery Society.

RayJay Wainman, the Executive Director, is like like the bosses at several other local successful recovery centres, a guy who has been "there and back. " His lessons were learned the inevitable hard way and they appear to stuck and stayed. I met RayJay on Saturday on the Queen Elizabeth Plaza at Recovery Day 2014.

The society, which currently houses over 32 adult men, is largely focused on relapse prevention and the program includes daily groups, 12 step meetings both on site and at local meeting places and lots of community volunteer work.

This is an old-fashioned clean and sober program and I liked what I saw.

Check out their website and please consider welcoming them into the recovery community and extending a hand in any way you can.

You can also find their website link in the right hand column of this page.

Monday, September 15, 2014

D.C. voters should reject the rush to legalize marijuana

By Editorial BoardSeptember 14 at 6:57 PM

THE
DISTRICT’S law decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana went into
effect only in July, but already voters are being asked to take the even
more far-reaching step of legalizing the drug.
We supported the elimination of harsh criminal penalties; jailing
people who smoked pot and saddling them with criminal records made no
sense and resulted in the unfair targeting of young black men.

But
the rush to legalize marijuana gives us — and we hope voters — serious
pause. Marijuana, as proponents of legalization argue, may or may not be
less harmful than alcohol and tobacco, both legal, but it is not
harmless. Questions exist, so it would be prudent for the District not
to make a change that could well prove to be misguided until more is
known. Foremost here are the experiences and lessons learned by states
that have opted for legalization.

Initiative No. 71, the
Legalization of Possession of Minimal Amounts of Marijuana for Personal
Use Act of 2014, will appear on the Nov. 4 ballot and, if approved,
would make it lawful for a person 21 years or older to possess up to two
ounces of marijuana for personal use, grow up to six plants at home and
transfer without payment up to one ounce of marijuana to another person
21 years or older. Because of the District’s restrictions on what is
subject to ballot approval, the initiative would not allow for the sale
of marijuana, but initiative backers say they would expect the D.C.
Council to address this and other issues with legislation.

It’s
instructive that the council, in assessing the city’s approach to
marijuana enforcement, chose the more cautious path of decriminalization
rather than outright legalization. Voters would do well to consider the
reasons for that caution.

The American Medical Association has
come out against legalization, arguing that “cannabis is a dangerous
drug and as such is a public health concern.” The active ingredient in
marijuana has been linked to memory problems, impaired thinking and
weakened immune systems, not to mention it acts as a gateway to more
dangerous drugs. Dangers are more pronounced for young people. A study
just published in the Lancet Psychiatry reported that teenagers who
smoke marijuana daily are 60 percent less likely to complete high school.
Advocates of legalization say it would not apply to young people but
with legalization inevitably comes a message of approval.

It’s not been a year since Colorado became the first state to allow recreational marijuana use and, as the Smart Approaches to Marijuana has
catalogued, there have been negative consequences, including increased
instances of impaired driving and increased use by youth. With marijuana
already decriminalized, there’s no reason for the District to rush the
next step; why not at least give Colorado a bit more time to provide
lessons?

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Study: Teens who smoke weed daily are 60% less likely to complete high school than those who never use

THIS PIECE WAS SENT TO US BY AL ARSENAULT AND BRIAN SHIPPER, BOTH PRINCIPALS IN THE ODD SQUAD. MANY THANKS.

Pre-rolled marijuana joints are pictured at the Sea of Green Farms in Seattle, Washington June 30, 2014. REUTERS/Jason Redmond

Teenagers
who smoke marijuana daily are over 60 percent less likely to complete
high school than those who never use. They're also 60 percent less
likely to graduate college and seven times more likely to
attempt suicide. Those are the startling conclusions of a new study of adolescent cannabis use out today in The Lancet Psychiatry, a British journal of health research.

Researchers
gathered data on the frequency of cannabis use among 3,725 students
from Australia and New Zealand, and then looked at the students'
developmental outcomes up to the age of 30. They found "clear and
consistent associations between frequency of cannabis use during
adolescence and most young adult outcomes investigated, even after
controlling for 53 potential confounding factors including age, sex,
ethnicity, socioeconomic status, use of other drugs, and mental
illness."

Significantly, they found that the risks for negative
outcomes increased with the frequency of cannabis use. In a conference
call, study co-author Edmund Sillins said that the relationship between
cannabis use and negative outcomes is significant even at low levels of
use (e.g., less than monthly), and that "the results suggest that there
may not be a threshold where use can be deemed safe" for teens.

According to the study, there are
significant relationships between cannabis use and high school
graduation, college graduation, suicide attempts, cannabis dependency
(not wholly surprising), and other illicit drug use.

The chart
plots the odds ratios of the frequency of cannabis use on various
outcomes, compared to not using cannabis at all. A value of 1 would
indicate equal odds of a given outcome, 2 would indicate an outcome
twice as likely as you'd get from not using cannabis at all, and a value
less than 1 would indicate decreased odds of a given outcome.

So
for instance, a person who uses cannabis less than monthly would have
slightly lower odds of graduating high school or getting a college
degree, compared to a person who doesn't use at all. Increased use
further decreases this likelihood. On the other hand, a person who uses
cannabis monthly would have roughly 4 times the likelihood of becoming
dependent on cannabis as a person who doesn't use at all.

It's
worth noting that for many of these indicators, the confidence intervals
(error bars on the chart) are fairly broad, meaning that there's some
degree of imprecision in these numbers.

You
can expect these findings to be highly cited by opponents of
liberalized marijuana laws, like the Office of National Drug Control
Policy and the Smart Approaches to Marijuana project. But it's important
to put them in proper context.

First, the causality isn't 100
percent clear. The researchers did a fantastic job of trying to account
for a number of confounding factors. But particularly when it comes to
the educational outcomes, there are a lot of factors at play. For
instance, if a teacher knows or even suspects that a certain kid is
using drugs, that may predispose the teacher against that student.
"Teachers are very likely to stigmatize drug users," says Joseph
Palamar, co-author of another recent study comparing teen marijuana and alcohol use. "That stereotype gives kids problems, and that kid's not gonna want to go to class."

Palamar
also says that because marijuana "is an illegal drug, you have to buy
it in an illegal manner, and then you’re exposed to the black market.
Marijuana use is affiliating you with other kids, some of whom might be
problematic – people more likely to question authority. You become
affiliated with things that might have a negative impact on your
education."

Moreover, Palamar's research shows that because of
marijuana's legal status, teen cannabis users are much more likely to
get into trouble with the police than teen alcohol users. And in many
cases, if you have a drug conviction on your record, you become
ineligible for college aid. "If you get caught with drugs, you're not
able to go to college," he told me.
In other words, many of the problems associated with teen cannabis use are likely a function of the drug's illegal status.

That
said, it's completely reasonable to accept that heavy use of any drug
as a teenager - be it weed, alcohol, or tobacco - is going to lead to
negative consequences down the line. This in itself isn't an argument
for prohibition of cannabis. For that, you'd need to demonstrate a link
between relaxed cannabis laws and increased teen drug use, with the
negative social consequences that go along with it. But multiple studies have shown a flat or even negative relationship between medical marijuana laws and teen cannabis use, for instance. And very early data out of Colorado shows a slight dip in teen use since the state passed a legalization measure in 2012.

But
the study does lend strong support to the case for efforts to keep the
drug out of the hands of teens, and it does make a case for closely
monitoring adolescent marijuana use in states that do legalize it.
Thinking
more broadly about the effects of drug prohibition, you have to weigh
the consequences of teen drug use against the societal consequences of
failed drug war policies - skyrocketing incarceration rates and
countless families and communities decimated by the illegal drug trade
and its overzealous opponents.

Endorsement

"All treatment centres in B.C. should get involved and support the Drug Prevention Network. As one collective voice we need to send the message that treatment works and it saves lives. There are recovery houses, treatment centers, private, government funded, long term, short term, detox, therapeutic communities etc. Let's help support prevention and help educate the public."